Samvera Governance Working Group

Does the "governance proposal" necessarily include details on how the community will resource shared work, and specifically software maintenance and development? I would find it difficult to support this group unless that is a stated focus of the proposal. (My understanding is that how we resource this shared work is what got us down this governance path in the first place, so I'm concerned that there's a risk this effort will be focused elsewhere. )

Great question, Mike.  I'll follow up.

May I echo Mike's concern?  My recollection is that all this started in a discussion about how to make our software development "more professional" now that it seems clear there is likely to be a general community move toward Hyrax and, in particular maybe, commercial service providers using it through Hyku.  We all have a real need to understand the process: how we can feed into it (feature requests etc) and what changes might be coming and when that could affect our delivery systems (roadmap).  The more established community would also welcome a clearer view of how materials coming from IGs and WGs get fed into the process (or not), likewise feature requests from users, and who makes these decisions. Behind all this is the need to encourage and sustain software development.  So from a personal point of view, I feel that this WG might usefully take a "bottom-up" approach.  What does Samvera need at the software R&D level to maintain and further the product, and what resources will this take?  Next, how do we reliably put these resources together (both people and $$$) and then, to my mind last, what management structures are needed to organize all this.  During the first round of discussions I sometimes felt that the "models" were coming first, rather than our needs (a more top-down process).

Somehow, during the last round, these software-related needs got conflated with community concerns which were not, I think, intended to be a primary focus.  The first WG did extensive work on a CAIRO matrix around software matters but did not do the same for the community side of things. Perhaps this group, too, should focus on software-related issues unless and until work goes into a similarly detailed CAIRO matrix about the community. 

Ideally, to my mind, anything that is proposed will be compatible with an evolutionary (rather than revolutionary) implementation!  Purely personal thoughts...